stop at night and clear up the work?" returned the girl. "She sends me away at six o'clock, as soon as I've washed the tea-things, and oftentimes earlier than that. It stands to reason I can't get through the work of a morning."
"You could do so quite well if you came to time," said the clerk, turning away to his walnut-tree. "Why don't you?"
"I overslept myself this morning. Father never called me afore he went out. No doubt he had a drop too much last night."
She went flying up the gravel-path as she spoke. Her father was the man Jones whom you saw at the railway station; her step-mother (for her own mother was dead) was Mrs. Gum's cousin.
She was a sort of stray sheep, this girl, in the eyes of Calne, not belonging very much to any one; her father habitually neglected her, her step-mother had twice turned her out of doors. Some three or four months ago, when Mrs. Gum was changing her servant, she had consented to try this girl. Jabez Gum knew nothing of the arrangement until it was concluded, and disapproved of it. Altogether, it did not work satisfactorily: Miss Jones was careless, idle, and impudent; her step-mother was dissatisfied because she was not taken into the house; and Clerk Gum threatened every day, and his wife very often, to dismiss her.
It was only within a year or two that they had not kept an indoor servant; and the fact of their not doing so now puzzled the gossips of Calne. The clerk's emoluments were the same as ever; there was no Willy to encroach on them now; and the work of the house required a good servant. However, it pleased Mrs. Gum to have one in only by day; and who was to interfere with her if the clerk did not?
Jabez Gum worked on for some little time after eight o'clock, the breakfast-hour. He rather wondered he was not called to it, and registered a mental vow to discharge Miss Becky. Presently he went indoors, put his head into a small sitting-room on the left, and found the room empty, but the breakfast laid. The kitchen was behind it, and Jabez Gum stalked on down the passage, and went into it. On the other side of the passage was the best sitting-room, and a very small room at the back of it, which Jabez used as an office, and where he kept sundry account-books.
"Where's your missis?" asked he of the maid, who was on her knees toasting bread.
"Not down yet," was the short response.
"Not down yet!" repeated Jabez in surprise, for Mrs. Gum was generally down by seven. "You've got that door open again, Rebecca. How many more times am I to tell you I won't have it?"
"It's the smoke," said Rebecca. "This chimbley always smokes when it's first lighted."
"The chimney doesn't smoke, and you know that you are telling a falsehood. What do you want with it open? You'll have that wild man darting in upon you some morning. How will you like that?"
"I'm not afeard of him," was the answer, as Rebecca got up from her knees. "He couldn't eat me."
"But you know how timid your mistress is," returned the clerk, in a voice of extreme anger. "How dare you, girl, be insolent?"
He shut the door as he spoke—one that opened from the kitchen to the back garden—and bolted it. Washing his hands, and drying them with a round towel, he went upstairs, and found Mrs. Gum—as he had now and then found her of late—in a fit of prostration. She was a little woman, with a light complexion, and insipid, unmeaning face—some such a face as Willy's had been—and her hair, worn in neat bands under her cap, was the colour of tow.
"I couldn't help it, Gum," she began, as she stood before the glass, her trembling fingers trying to fasten her black alpaca gown—for she had never left off mourning for their son. "It's past eight, I know; but I've had such an upset this morning as never was, and I couldn't dress myself. I've had a shocking dream."
"Drat your dreams!" cried Mr. Gum, very much wanting his breakfast.
"Ah, Gum, don't! Those morning dreams, when they're vivid as this was, are not sent for ridicule. Pike was in it; and you know I can't bear him to be in my dreams. They are always bad when he is in them."
"If you wanted your breakfast as much as I want mine, you'd let Pike alone," retorted the clerk.
"I thought he was mixed up in some business with Lord Hartledon. I don't know what it was, but the dream was full of horror. It seemed that Lord Hartledon was dead or dying; whether he'd been killed or not, I can't say; but an awful dread was upon me of seeing him dead. A voice called out, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and in the fright I awoke. I can't remember what part Pike played in the dream," she continued, "only the impression remained that he was in it."
"Perhaps he killed Lord Hartledon?" cried Gum, mockingly.
"No; not in the dream. Pike did not seem to be mixed up in it for ill. The ill was all on Lord Hartledon; but it was not Pike brought it upon him. Who it was, I couldn't see; but it was not Pike."
Clerk Gum looked down at his wife in scornful pity. He wondered sometimes, in his phlegmatic reasoning, why women were created such fools.
"Look here, Mrs. G. I thought those dreams of yours were pretty nearly dreamed out—there have been enough of 'em. How any woman, short of a born idiot, can stand there and confess herself so frightened by a dream as to be unable to get up and go about her duties, is beyond me."
"But, Gum, you don't let me finish. I woke up with the horror, I tell you—"
"What horror?" interrupted the clerk, angrily. "What did it consist of? I can't see the horror."
"Nor can I, very clearly," acknowledged Mrs. Gum; "but I know it was there. I woke up with the very words in my ears, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and I started out of bed in terror for Lord Hartledon, lest he should come. We are only half awake, you know, at these moments. I pulled the curtain aside and looked out. Gum, if ever I thought to drop in my life, I thought it then. There was but one person to be seen in the road—and it was Lord Hartledon."
"Oh!" said Mr. Gum, cynically, after a moment of natural surprise. "Come out of his vault for a morning walk past your window, Mrs. G.!"
"Vault! I mean young Lord Hartledon, Gum."
Mr. Gum was a little taken back. They had been so much in the habit of calling the new Lord Hartledon, Lord Elster—who had not lived at Calne since he came into the title—that he had thought of the old lord when his wife was speaking.
"He was up there, just by the turning of the road, going on to Hartledon. Gum, I nearly dropped, I say. The next minute he was out of sight; then I rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was awake."
"And whether you saw a ghost, or whether you didn't," came the mocking retort.
"It was no ghost, Gum; it was Lord Hartledon himself."
"Nonsense! It was just as much one as the other. The fact is, you hadn't quite woke up out of that fine dream of yours, and you saw double. It was just as much young Hartledon as it was me."
"I never saw a ghost yet, and I don't fear I ever shall, Gum. I tell you it was Lord Hartledon. And if harm doesn't befall him at Calne, as shadowed forth in my dream, never believe me again."
"There, that's enough," peremptorily cried the clerk; knowing, if once Mrs. Gum took up any idea with a dream for its basis, how impossible it was to turn her. "Is the key of that kitchen door found yet?"
"No: it never will be, Gum. I've told you so before. My belief is, and always has been, that Rebecca let it drop by accident into the waste bucket."
"My belief is, that Rebecca made away with it for her own purposes," said the clerk. "I caught her just now with the door wide open. She's trying to make acquaintance with the man Pike; that's what she's at."
"Oh, Gum!"
"Yes; it's all very well to say 'Oh, Gum!' but if you were below-stairs looking after her, instead of dreaming up here, it might be better for everyone. Let me once be certain about it, and off she goes the next hour. A fine thing 'twould be some day for us to find her head smothered in the kitchen purgatory, and the silver spoons gone; as will be the case if any loose characters get in."
He was descending the stairs as he spoke the last sentence, delivered in loud tones, probably for the benefit of Miss Rebecca Jones. And lest the